Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team is “changing things up” in a bid to improve their position ahead of the Australian Grand Prix on April 2.
Talk to reporters at Saudi Arabia Grand PrixTeam principal Wolff said he wouldn’t be embarrassed if the refurbished car looked like a Red Bull, as long as it was quick.
“Right now we’re just going to go all out and change things up,” he said.
“We’re making really big strides now with our R&D, with our understanding of [wind] tunnels, which are really big steps forward because we just need confirmation in Bahrain that we were wrong.
“I think if we continue to take the big steps that we’ve taken in the last 10 days then I think we’ll get to a stage where we can actually respond.”
George Russell and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton finished fourth and fifth at Jeddah respectively, still a long way behind Red Bull and behind Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso but ahead of both Ferraris.
In Bahrain, Mercedes was the fourth fastest team. Red Bull has won both races so far by one-two, only to lose one point for the fastest lap.
Two-time world champion Max Verstappen went from 15th to second in Saudi Arabia, edging past Hamilton – who said on Saturday he feels “a bit lost” with his car myself – as if I were marking back.
“The kind of interest that’s coming, in our R&D and aeronautics, is much larger than we’ve had for a long time,” Wolff said after Russell qualified for the fourth round before moving forward. third on the Saudi Arabian starting grid.
“We opened up some potential because now we simply see things from different angles. We have a different perspective, because we learned about the test and the life. race in Bahrain.”
Wolff said he doesn’t want to sound “stupidly optimistic” but that all of the car’s visible aerodynamic surfaces are under review.
“The car is upside down at the moment and there’s a lot of good that we see,” he added. “We see low-hanging fruit with encouraging things.”
“We have no dogmatism about what the car should look like. It just needs to be the fastest race car possible. If that car looks like Red Bull… I don’t care. I wouldn’t. shame if it’s fast.”
